Easing on down the carbon emissions road

Donna O’Brien, quality and systems manager at Aqua-Gas Manufacturing, explains how the company has taken a significant initial step forward in understanding its carbon emissions and preparing for a carbon-restricted future.

Many of you will be aware of the increasing importance both UK and international governments are attaching to reducing carbon emissions over the next few years. With this political backdrop, it will come as no surprise to you that business is being increasingly targeted to play its part in reaching these targets. Companies are being encouraged to invest in energy efficiency with tax reduction incentives and will have emissions 'caps' (limits) placed upon them. The first of these for our business sector is due in 2010. It will be called the Carbon Reduction

Commitment and will require participants to purchase ‘emission rights’ from businesses that are below their 'cap'. This is the first scheme targeted at large and medium sized nonenergy intensive businesses and it is expected that it will be progressively extended to capture ever more companies.

What does all this mean for Aqua Gas Manufacturing Corby and AVK Group? At this early stage it means three things: a) that as a group of UK companies we may have a carbon emissions cap placed upon us; b) that we will have to account ever more stringently for our energy use and direct and indirect carbon emissions using the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) and ; c) that our customers will increasingly ask us about how much carbon has been emitted in making our products.

How can we best deal with these likely impacts and protect and grow our business while helping to achieve the overall reductions? The key to minimising both cost and administration impact will be our ability to easily record and analyse at regular intervals the energy use and carbon emissions of each of our business activities to ensure we have efficient processes.

In preparation, we have commissioned CarbonLow Limited to provide Aqua-Gas Manufacturing with an online supply chain carbon footprint monitoring system. Known as CLOEE (CarbonLow Ongoing Emissions Evaluation), the first phase of the system is now installed and allows us to record energy used in our Corby factory, by our inbound and outbound shipping and haulage, and our business travel by car, plane and train. CLOEE allows us to allocate data input requirements by department in order to minimise our additional workload. We receive text or e-mail reminders to upload the data for each period.

The collection of data from Aqua-Gas Manufacturing is in the process of being automated such that energy use profiles can be analysed in detail using sophisticated energy use software called Altitude. This will be used to assess whether investment in more energy efficient equipment can be brought forward. It is important to remember that all actions that we take as individuals and employees of Aqua-Gas Manufacturing and AVK will impact our supply chain carbon footprint in one way or another.

With this in mind, we will be continually looking for ways to reduce our energy spend and therefore our carbon emissions in advance of any fixed targets which may be imposed.

Benefits So Far The benefits of the process so far are that we have a clear understanding of our direct and indirect (supplier) carbon emissions and their relative impact on our overall carbon footprint. We have been able to analyse the costs of each aspect of our supply chain and look at ways to improve the process. We have, for instance, removed as far as possible the need for air freight; we have looked at minimising inbound and outbound shipments; we are in the process of analysing whether energy is wasted by our air-compressors; we have a clearer understanding of the cost savings that can be made through negotiation with our electricity and gas suppliers.

Overall, we have targeted a 10% reduction in energy (including haulage and shipping) spend during the year 1st May 2007 to 30th April 2008. This will bring similar reductions in our carbon emissions. CLOEE allows us to easily compare periods of choice against our ‘baseline’ period and thus show our progress both internally and, increasingly, to our customers. Having captured the data, we can now easily report our emission KPI’s.